A free-standing diamond film, mounted on a metallic platform, is an attractive submount on which to attach a laser device, in order to supply electrical access and thermal sinking to the device during laser operation. More particularly, the diamond film is advantageously initially grown by a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process on either a silicon or a metal substrate, and then either the diamond is removed from the substrate or then the substrate is completely etched (dissolved), whereby only a free-standing diamond film remains. Then the top and bottom faces of the diamond film are advantageously subjected to a massive material removal ("thinning") process for a prescribed amount of time, whereby prescribed thicknesses from the top and bottom of the film are removed, in order to improve the thermal conductivity of the bottom region of the film and to improve the smoothness of the top surface of the film (for better thermal contact with the laser device). Such diamond material removal methods are taught, for example, in copending application Ser. No. 07/822,470 filed on Jan. 17, 1992, and in copending application Ser. No. 07/908,130 filed on Jul. 2, 1992.
A technological issue that arises in attaching the laser (or other electronic) device to the diamond film involves subsequently mechanically aligning the laser device with respect to its position on, followed by bonding the device to, its metallized bonding pad located on the top surface of the film--for the purpose of mechanical stability and of subsequently supplying electrical access to the laser device during testing and during normal operation. Precise aligning is desirable so that the device has a prescribed position with respect to the film, since it is also desirable that the film, and hence the device, is properly aligned with respect to a package that contains the film. In prior art such aligning has been obtained typically by determining the position of the laser device on its bonding pad by means of precise optical sighting, which is a cumbersome time-consuming method. Therefore it would be desirable to have a self-aligned method for precisely positioning the laser device with respect to the diamond submount followed by bonding the thus aligned device to the submount--that is to say, a precise-alignment-followed-by-bonding method that does not require precise optical sighting.